According to today’s safety standards, the design of safety-relevant structures and installations as well as particularly exposed buildings also requires the consideration of short-term dynamic extreme loads as a result of impacts such as explosions, impact loads, aircraft crashes or shells. Not least since the terrorist act of September 11, 2001 at the World-Trade Center in New York, it is necessary to take into account the robustness of structural structures against short-term dynamic demands in the design. This requirement is also found in the European regulatory frameworks, although there is still a need for development and regulation in many details. The research focuses on the CWE in the following areas:
- Explosion loads
- Impact abras
- Impact loads from bullets
- Plane crashes
- Short-term dynamic computational models
- Development of analytical computational approaches
For the listed special loads, a description of the influence by semi-empirical or by measured or determined by simulation models is required in the first step. After describing the action, computational models are developed at different accuracy levels at the CWE. In general, an interpretation of the structures can be carried out on the basis of empirical formulae, analytical calculation approaches or explicit short-term dynamic calculations, whereby the characteristics of the action must always be taken into account in the simplified calculation approaches.
For the explicit dynamic calculations, the CWE provides efficient and validated strain-based material models for various materials (e.B. steel, reinforced concrete, masonry). With the computer capacities available at the CWE, these models enable precise simulation of nonlinear failure mechanisms during impact operations.
The aim of the research activities at the CWE is also the use and development of innovative highly dissipative materials and constructions in order to destroy the energy of the impact loads. For the development with several iterations of optimization, many years of experience are available at the Chair of Structural Engineering and Construction Dynamics as well as at the Institute of Steel Construction.